It's a Freaking Secret

There are some things out there in this free society that is kept hidden and secret.  Trade secrets are some of those things.  It's like your friend's grandmother's secret recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce (damn it, I want that recipe) except that it makes money and is probably guarded with more than a index card filing box and an elderly woman with a wooden spoon and the ability to beat you senseless with it.

Protector of trade secrets.  Woman is lethal with a wooden spoon.

Now in addition to things like the secret formula to making Coca-cola to medicines to whatever addictive substance is in those delicious rice cakes at the local Korean market, you can add...race.  Yes, race.

Five Silicon Valley companies -- Google, Apple, Yahoo, Oracle, and Applied Materials (they're a chip manufacturer) -- won their battle to not disclose the racial makeup of their employees as a "trade secret."  (Hewlett Packard tried and lost.)  Um...what?

The colors are supposed to be secret.

Yes, apparently the racial composition of the employee body somehow augments their ability to do tech stuff. Really?  Have they discovered some sort of Colonel Sanders like recipe of the exact blend of African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Whites, Hispanics, and Indian Americans (for spice) that is the optimal ratio for developing things like the iPad and database application development tools?  Wouldn't bet on it.  I highly doubt that their trade secret is employing all white people for management or having Asian-American and Indian programmers--wait...

The very obvious assumption one can make here is that there is something going on here that probably won't look good.  My suspicion is that there are few if any minorities in positions of power, something which probably wouldn't shock me.  Irritate me, perhaps.  But shock me, no.

Usually, from what I can surmise about many large tech firms, is that while there are many brilliant programmers and tech grunts of varying ranks and abilities who are of Asian heritage/descent.  But their actual managers in charge of these non-commissioned folks are usually white.  This has been a common problem for Asian-Americans, as they're viewed as "shunning power" or some horse-manure laden argument like that.  And the presence of the traditionally marginalized racial groups, such as African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans, can be described as minimal on a good day.

Unless they've all developed their own "secret" race of people...

They left their amazing coding and personnel management skills out of the theatrical version.  It'll be on the DVD.